Get ready for a wild summer of fun in Oakland and the entire Bay Area. There will be all sorts of misdirection. There will be hidden agendas. There will be froth. So please, do yourself a favor:

Block out all the white noise regarding the A’s and Raiders and their stadium/ballpark situation and negotiations.
Over the next six months, as various deadlines and benchmarks come up, you will be hearing a lot of that white noise coming from the East Bay environs. The white noise will mean nothing until serious adult-like talks finally commence and are eventually completed to resolve stuff with both teams – and I might as well throw in the Warriors, too, since they have their own unresolved facility issue.

We heard more white noise this week. First, as reported by my erstwhile colleague Tim Kawakami, Warriors’ owner Joe Lacob proclaimed that he would strongly consider buying the A’s from owners John Fisher and Lew Wolff. As was reported, Lacob made some sort of pitch to Fisher, who replied that the A’s were definitely not for sale.

When I asked Wolff this week about it, in fact, he told me that the report was full of “totally erroneous information” and denied that Lacob has ever made any offer to either Fisher or Wolff.

So noted. But has Lacob ever made casual inquiries about whether the A’s might be for sale? That’s a fuzzier issue. Rich people who love sports tend to talk about this kind of stuff casually when they’re together. Lacob and Fisher and Wolff are rich people. They love sports. They see each other at Bay Area sports events. Frankly, it would be surprising if the topic had not arisen.

But put that in perspective. Over the past several of years as the A’s have been frustrated in attempts to assemble a ballpark project, Lacob is hardly the only person to ask Fisher and Wolff whether their baseball team might be for sale. In fact, Lacob is not even the only person to ask them this week. From Sacramento comes word that Kevin Johnson, the city’s mayor,, sent an e-mail to Fisher the other day to inquire whether the A’s might be on the market for a potential buyer that would move the team to California’s capital city. Here’s what happened: Continue Reading →